Technician Scheduling Guide
Technician scheduling is the unsung hero of field service success where off-site workers are involved. While workforce scheduling has nothing to do with the quality of a technician’s work, effective scheduling can be a critical revenue driver when done right. However, if executed poorly, scheduling can cause your whole organisation to grind to a halt. That’s not so hot.
Having unproductive gaps in your schedule means you’re not maximising your billable hours or your technician’s time. Service managers and dispatch teams can spend a lot of time assigning the right field technician to the right job, which comes with its fair share of challenges. In this article, we will explore these challenges and look at the solutions available to you.
What is technician scheduling?
Technician scheduling is the elaborate dance of assigning the right technician to the right job at the right time, all while considering a multitude of factors. It’s a tightrope act of balancing efficiency, customer satisfaction, and technician well-being.
What does technician scheduling involve?
Now that we understand broadly what technician scheduling involves, what are the challenges associated that typically come with the territory?
Technician Scheduling Challenges
What Does Best Practice Technician Scheduling Look Like?
As we have seen above, effective technician scheduling is a big ask that presents many avenues for a headache. Herein lies the opportunity for improvement. Technician scheduling demands strategic planning and the adoption of best practices.
Technician scheduling software could be the game-changer you’ve been waiting for. It would enable businesses like yours to confront these challenges head-on, prevent scheduling gaps, and enhance overall efficiency. Here are three tips to help you adopt and apply the technology to your business, setting you up for success from the start.
Tip #1: Create well-defined criteria for prioritising service tasks.
Efficient technician scheduling begins with establishing clear criteria for prioritising service tasks. Factors such as location proximity, job urgency, job value, customer proximity and criticality to the customer’s operations should all be assessed. When you start structuring priorities, you streamline the scheduling process. This ensures that the most critical tasks take precedence and the least critical are attended to in time and in process, driving forward efficiency gains.
Tip #2: Standardised Scheduling
Effective scheduling requires minimising the chance of errors. Standardising workflows and processes that determine how each request is scheduled and assigned to a technician reduces the risk of mistakes. For instance, implementing skill-based routing ensures that technicians with specific expertise are assigned tasks that align with their skills. Say your technicians specialise in one area of your service; it makes sense to ‘save’ their skills for jobs that require their expertise. Without this, you could be setting yourself up to lose business when your experts are all booked up with work that a generalist or subcontractor could handle.
Tip #3: Schedule By Location
If it doesn’t make sense for your industry or team to schedule by skill set, technician scheduling based on location is a good alternative. Scheduling jobs based on location is more efficient than booking work all over town to fill your schedule. It’s better to cater to one region or zone on a given day than to have your technicians driving all over the place, wasting gas and time between jobs.
For example, you might only book jobs in service zones one and two on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, you might focus on servicing zones three and four.
Tip #4: Optimise Technician Availability
Schedule and manage technicians to ensure they reach the customers closest to them and meet the job’s skill requirements. Your customers will be happier if the technician shows up to the appointment on time and resolves their problem on that first visit. Planning jobs based on location proves more efficient than scattering assignments across town, saving time and expenses. That’s because it’s more beneficial to serve a specific area close to the technician than to have them drive all over town, spending money on gas and wasting time between assignments.
By adopting these best practices, you begin to lay the foundation for a robust technician scheduling system. Now, let’s explore actionable tips that can further refine your technician scheduling approach and lead to tangible operational improvements.
Learn More: What is Workforce Scheduling, And Why Is It Important?
Workforce Scheduling Software
in action.
“Schedules are calculated and ready to go in just 15 minutes. Our managers no longer
need to spend their weekends preparing for the week ahead.”
Jason Chandler, Senior Operations Director at Kelly Group
How Can You Improve Technician Scheduling?
Changing how you schedule team members might seem daunting at this point. However, workforce scheduling doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right software solution in place, it can be seamless.
What Is Workforce Scheduling Software?
Workforce scheduling software allows organisations to schedule and dispatch the right field worker to the right job at the right time, ensuring they are fully equipped to carry out an appointment or service. Solutions like Totalmobile’s dynamic workforce scheduling capability efficiently automate and optimise scheduling processes. This enables organisations like yours to create efficient schedules that enhance first-time fixes and reduce costs – all while increasing technician capability. The solution works with the scheduler to make intelligent decisions based on the business objectives and requirements of the day. It allows easy access to live job information and real-time changes as and when required.
OUR PLATFORM EMPOWERS YOU TO:
- Track and monitor work orders to completion.
- Reduce paper-based processes and schedules while reducing the need to travel back and forth to the office.
- It provides field-based staff visibility to their schedule and routed travel plans in advance of their day, ensuring efficient service and allowing field engineers to get straight to work.
- Identify teams and areas that perform well.
- You can save on costs as routes to jobs are optimised. This reduces travel time for field-based staff and increases their capacity and productivity to complete more jobs.
- Meet those all-important SLA targets while meeting your customers’ demands.
- Improve communications between office and field-based staff and between field-based staff and customers.
In practice, this looks like:
Closing Thoughts
Having gaps in your schedule means losing out on potential revenue and paying technicians for idle time. The key is to find the right processes and tools to make managing your technician scheduling a breeze. Totalmobile’s Dynamic Scheduling Capability simplifies complications, improves logistics, prevents scheduling gaps, and reduces errors.
Save Time and Deliver Punctual Service
Automate the creation of efficient technician schedules to transform your business into a well-oiled machine. Technicians arrive promptly, reducing response times to service calls and enhancing overall operational efficiency.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Elevate the customer experience by consistently assigning the right technicians to every appointment. This boosts first-time-fix rates, ensures on-time service delivery, and establishes a reputation for reliability and excellence.
Operational and Cost Efficiency
Say goodbye to revenue loss and dissatisfied customers caused by disorganised schedules. Improved planning and logistics lead to fewer repeat site visits, reducing operational and administrative costs while enhancing overall efficiency.
Ready to revolutionise your scheduling processes and optimise your business for success? Schedule a demo of Totalmobile’s technician scheduling software today.
